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Since the formation of the Alberta Teachers’ Alliance (the forerunner of the Alberta Teachers’ Association) in 1918, the teachers’ organization has been focused on both the economic needs and the professional advancement of the teaching profession. The organization was established for certificate holders (as opposed to the moribund Alberta Education Association, from which the Alliance was created, which included members of the legislative assembly, clergy, trustees and other education do-gooders). The Alliance founders were very clear—it would be a professional organization, not a glee club for pedagogical spectators. And from its beginning, the organization has focused on the fullest range of teachers’ professional and economic needs.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Alliance called for significant improvements to members’ economic welfare, including a legislated minimum salary and security of tenure. In 1932, the Alliance ratified a declaration of principles underlying members’ professional ethics, advancing the Code of Honour that had been approved at the 1918 annual meeting.
In 1935, under a government led by the United Farmers Association, the Alberta legislature passed the Teaching Profession Act, which recognized the Alberta Teachers’ Association as the official voice of certificate holders, granting authority to represent the teaching profession. The following year, the new Social Credit government amended the act to require automatic membership of teachers and to grant the Association the authority to discipline members—all teachers employed by public and separate school boards were now required by law to be members, subject to professional discipline.
In the 1940s, the Association expanded its authority in collective bargaining (through formal means or voluntary recognition) and collective agreements were established between school boards and the Association. While labour action was very rare, teachers across the province, in solidarity, supported teachers who were affected by such action. The Association also took over responsibility for teachers’ conventions, focusing on improving professional practice.
Extensive discussions were undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s to grant the Association full self-governance, including the authority to bestow teaching certificates, but an agreement was elusive. However, the government did grant the Association the authority to police the competence of teachers, and the Teaching Profession Act was amended in 2004. The Practice Review Bylaws were approved in 2007 and came into effect in 2009.
Given school board consolidation, centralized funding by government and the loss of school board taxation authority, the government passed the Public Education Collective Bargaining Act in 2015, recognizing the Association as the bargaining agent for teachers employed by school boards and establishing the Teachers’ Employer Bargaining Association (TEBA) as the representative of school boards for central table bargaining.
Today, the Association has both “union” and “professional” functions, consistent with the Teaching Profession Act, but that doesn’t mean that the core structure of the teaching profession hasn’t been challenged over the years. In 1981, Education Minister David King proposed breaking up the Association, separating the union and professional regulatory functions. There was an outcry from teachers and the proposal was dropped. When the teaching practices of James Keegstra came to light (the Eckville teacher taught students that the Holocaust had not happened), there was a focus on how teachers were evaluated and on the Association’s dual role of representing teachers and also disciplining them. In 1985, a provincial commission established to review the Keegstra debacle recommended that the Association’s union and professional regulatory functions be split. Teachers did not respond kindly to this further intervention into the profession’s governance and the government chose not to act on the proposals. In the 1990s, Innisfail–Sylvan Lake MLA Gary Severtson brought forward private members’ bills to end the Association’s “dual function” and in 2014 Education Minister Jeff Johnson created the Task Force on Teaching Excellence, which also threatened to break up the Association.
Who should belong?
The Association’s membership has also been attacked at various times throughout the organization’s history. In the 1950s and 1960s, some school boards regularly proposed to remove principals from the bargaining unit. And in the 1990s, Edmonton Public sought an order from the Alberta Labour Relations Board to remove principals from the bargaining unit on the basis that they were management employees. The Alberta Court of Appeal ultimately resolved the matter by determining that the legislature intended that principals be a part of the Association. In 2003, Alberta’s Commission on Learning called for the removal of principals and central office teachers from the Association. In 2004, the Teaching Profession Act was amended to allow central office teachers to elect their membership status, but government did not act on the commission’s recommendation to remove principals from the Association.
Since its very inception, the Association has sought to advance the economic needs of teachers and to meet the professional needs of teachers. Advancing teachers’ economic needs is in the profession’s self interest; addressing professional needs is in the collective interest of the profession and the public. Why is it so important to maintain a teachers’ organization with these “dual functions”? Why is a unified profession so important?
How teachers are governed really does make a difference. While many teachers’ organizations maintain functions relating to both union and professional roles, some do not (and the initial choice isn’t one that teachers’ organizations always get to make). Governments in British Columbia and Ontario removed principals from the teachers’ organizations and gutted the organizations of professional functions, transforming them into pure trade unions. Professional regulatory functions were transferred to a college of teachers, paid for by teachers. This shift effectively replaced collegial relations across the profession with management–labour relations—principals and central office teachers were now management and classroom teachers were labour.
For more than a century, the Association has sought full responsibility for the governance of the teaching profession. Key to this is a commitment to separate the union and professional regulatory functions within a single organization and to ensure that the latter responsibilities always respect the public interest. It makes sense that both professional and union functions exist together. It is a reality of a teacher’s work every day. Teachers are professionals, but they cannot be self-employed. So they work in a union environment, side by side with other union members, utilizing collegial relations.
For the teaching profession, the strongest possible structure is one in which all certificate holders are members of the Association, with all their various roles effectively represented in governance. This creates the greatest capacity to “row together” to help every student meet their full potential. Such a structure maximizes collegial relations and places the greatest emphasis on supporting each classroom teacher to meet each student’s learning needs.
A unified profession collapses when it is recast into a traditional management–union structure. Collegial relations disappear and are replaced with management–labour relations. Central office staff and principals direct teachers and teachers do as they are told. Issues are resolved through the grievance process in the collective agreement. Filing grievances with the principal becomes a regular pastime.
So now is the time to expand the Association’s professional regulatory functions, not to remove them. The profession should be fully self-governing. The Association’s membership should be all certificate holders in Alberta, and the Association should be granted the right to issue teaching certificates. Teachers in various roles (e.g., classroom teachers, principals, central office teachers, superintendents, others) should be effectively represented in the governance of the profession. And remember, the profession includes teachers employed in faculties of education, government and private schools. A fully unified profession maximizes collegial relations and minimizes management–labour relations, and the structure best supports professional practice.
As in many things, it works best when we all stick together and support one another to achieve our core work as members of the teaching profession: meeting each student’s learning needs.
Dr. Gordon Thomas served on the Association’s executive staff from 1984 to 2018, including service as executive secretary from 2003 to 2018. He has studied how teachers are governed in education systems all over the world.
